A 90-YEAR-OLD woman says she has lost the will to live after being burgled as she slept.

It is the third time that great-grandmother Lilian Darlington has been raided since 1997. Thieves forced open a back window on the ground-floor of her home in Longsight and took a purse with é40 in it.

The purse was under the pillow of a bed where, until the night of the robbery, she had slept since breaking her foot in March. That night she had slept upstairs.

Although the move prevented her from coming face-to-face with the intruders, Lilian said: "After this, I just feel there's nothing worth living for.

"What is the point? I don't know what more I can do.

"I've had bars put on some of the windows and I've applied to the council to move to another house, but I haven't got to the top of the list for a bungalow yet. I've lived in this house more than 50 years but I want to leave now.

Pension

"I've had enough of being burgled and there's nothing more I can do to stop it." Lilian, a mother-of-six, who has nine grandchildren, was first burgled in 1997.

Her purse containing é20 and her grandmother's emerald and diamond ring were taken by a man who ran through the open front door while she was mowing her lawn.

Four months later, on the night of her 83rd birthday, burglars ransacked her bedroom as she slept heavily after taking a sleeping tablet. The thieves even moved her pillow so they could grab her purse containing five weeks' pension money.

They also took jewellery valued at é300.

Lilian, who lives with her 56-year-old son Lesley, added: "I don't feel safe here any more. I don't know what is going to happen next. It is a shame.

"I've lived here since the last war and I've brought my family up here, but things have got worse in this area."

Greater Manchester Police are investigating the burglary.

A spokesman said: "Officers have been to see Mrs Darlington and investigations are continuing. This is a particularly despicable theft from a frail old lady."